Marijam looked up at the skylight. The smoky
plastiglass, which covered the ordinary plastic window, was distorting her view
of the stars. But it could not dull the brightness of the strange lights, which
were shooting across the sky tonight. They were still changing colour. They
were even more intense now than when they started an hour ago.
‘Is it working again?’ her mother called up from the other
chamber.
Marijam looked at the dataserve screen. Still frozen. She
bit her lip and ran her fingers through her hair. She wanted to finish the unit
on the causes of sunlight poisoning in the late twenty-third century. That
would complete her Part One, the first of her Specialist Study for her High
School Graduation Certificate and well before the summer holiday.
‘No!’ she called back.
‘Well give it a rest, now, sweetheart,’ her father called. ‘You
really should watch this. It’s the first time the Northern Lights have appeared
for centuries.’
Marijam’s mother, Louish Kennedy, came into the room.
Dressed from head to toe in a besequined pale blue satin, Louish stood out as
usual from the damp greyness of the cave walls. Marijam winced as she saw her.
She preferred to blend in with her surroundings. But even Mrs Kennedy couldn’t
compete tonight with the light show out there.
‘Do you think’ she said to Marijam, ‘it might mean that the
poison cloud’s beginning to lift at last? And it really is something, isn’t it?’
Marijam watched as a sheet of light shot across the sky.
Marbled streamers of pinks and golds and greens flowed into one another.
Marijam had never seen so many colours in one go. It was so dull down here in
the caves. And even when you went up into the tubes and walked across the
surface, you looked at everything through grey glass. The colours were so
bright tonight that the glass couldn’t dull them.
‘I don’t think it is actually the Northern Lights,’ said
Marijam’s father, appearing in the doorway. ‘I’ve seen movie clips of them, and
they weren’t this pretty. Even when you saw them direct, and not through
plastiglass.’
‘I don’t think you’ll be able to get anything else done
tonight,’ said her mother. ‘There are too many problems with the network.’ She
shivered. ‘The other support systems will work, won’t they?’ she asked, looking
at her husband.
Marijam’s father, Frazier Kennedy, Head of Education, smiled.
‘They’ll be fine,’ he said to Louish, combing his hand
through his wiry black hair.
Marijam recognised the gesture. He always did that when he
was trying to convince himself rather than the person he was speaking to. He
hugged his wife, resting his dark brown cheek against her greyish pale one. Not
for the first time Marijam looked at her own arms and wished she had inherited
her father’s skin colour instead of her mother’s. The cave-life was just
washing white people out.
‘They always give the air top priority,’ Frazier continued,
the skin round his eyes beginning to crinkle as his eyes smiled. ‘They’ll keep
the seals in place as well.
‘But they’ve got to keep the life support systems going… on
the farms and everything,’ Louish continued.
Marijam suddenly noticed how anxious her mother looked. The
pupils of her eyes were bigger and her face was a shade whiter than normal.
Frazier shrugged his shoulders lightly and opened his arms,
turning his palms upwards, and admitting defeat. ‘The education networks will
be the first to go down,’ he said. ‘They’ll keep the lights on in the plantation
caves, and yes, they’ll let us carry on breathing. Don’t worry so much.’
A purple light, edged with silver and blue streamed across
the sky, catching Marijam’s eye and making her look again through the skylight.
She held her breath. Not even the Midsummer Presidential Laser Show could match
this.
It wasn’t just the lights, though. There was something about
the atmosphere tonight. It was warm, even with the air conditioning, and she
had this overwhelming feeling that something tremendous was about to happen.
‘Well, I guess nobody will be studying much tonight,’ said
Marijam’s mother. ‘Everyone will be up in the tubes, getting a closer look at
the sky.’
‘You should go and meet your friends,’ said Frazier. ‘You’ve
just got to enjoy an event like this with people of your own age.’
‘Well, we’re going anyway,’ said Mrs Kennedy.
It probably was a good idea. There seemed to be little hope
of completing her project tonight. And goodness knows when anything as exciting
as this would happen again. Marijam felt a strange fluttering in her stomach.
Her heart was racing.
‘Go on,’ said Louish Kennedy. ‘Put on your best tunic. Go
and meet your friends. I’ll bet they’re all out there.’
They left her room. Marijam turned to her wardrobe. It was
overflowing. She was the only daughter of the Head of Education. All the Heads
of Services – Education, Transport, Agriculture, Life Support, Diastics and all
the other services which kept this isolated planet going - were rich and
important. Marijam could have anything she wanted apart from fresh air. Her
parents had even let her have the room with the skylight. She opened the door.
Row upon row of tunics. Black and grey ones. Some were made from expensive wool
and cotton. Then there were the ordinary ones out of ripon, the cheap comfortable
cloth that everyone wore. And some in blue, red, lilac, in fact every colour
you could think of.
How can I possibly
choose from all these? she thought.
So much for equality.
She always felt guilty that her father’s position allowed
her so much. Everyone was supposed to be born with equal chances. She knew,
though, that she had it easier than many. That was why she normally preferred
to just wear a comfortable dull-coloured ripon tunic.
She really didn’t go out much, even though she was allowed
to use the cyber beaches and holoscenes as much as she liked. That was yet
another advantage of being the daughter of one of the Heads of Services. There
was never a question about the cost. On the whole, though, she preferred the
solitude of her room and her dataserve, and the sky above, which she looked at
through her skylight. She liked to dream of a time when all the people – even
those from the Z Zone - would be able to walk freely on the surface of the
planet. Would they ever be able to again? And would it be in her lifetime?
No, that won’t do, she thought to herself as she took
down her old grey tunic. Not today. Today’s really special.
Marijam found herself gently touching a purple silk tunic.
It was so soft and smooth beneath her fingers. She had not worn it before. It
had been a present from her aunt, her mother’s sister.
‘You should get out more and enjoy yourself,’ Aunt Kayla
said. She always told Marijam off about spending too much time in front of a
dataserve screen, of not going out enough and mixing with other young people.
Well, Aunt, thought Marijam, you would be astounded. Yes,
this will do nicely.
She felt the soft fineness of the silk next to her skin. It
added to her excitement. She sprayed on some perfume, and even put on a little
make up. She looked at herself in the mirror.
Yes, she would do nicely as well. Though for what, she was
not quite sure. Another streak of pink light rushed through the sky above. She
heard the swish of the vacuum doors closing in the entrance hall below. Her
parents were already on their way. Time to get going for her as well.
The crowds making their way through the cave networks were
stifling. Marijam had never seen so many people out at once. If you could
really call it ‘out’. Even up in the tubes wasn’t really ‘out’. She had often
wondered what ‘out’ would really be like. Not even this many people were around
for the President’s Laser Show or the Christmas Walks. The queues for the lifts
were really long. Marijam asked herself whether it would be better to just make
her way to one of the large skylights. But no! Looking up from a tube would be
a bit nearer to standing in a field and staring at the night sky.
‘Oh come on, get a move on,’ she heard one man mumble under
his breath.
Exactly, she thought.
‘I expect we’ll get there eventually,’ a woman’s voice
answered him.
It was amazing how calm people were staying.
Eventually she was at the front of the queue and the lift
came. In seconds they were up at the surface, and she was joining the crowds
now making their way along the tubes. She desperately wanted to get to
somewhere where they didn’t criss-cross over each other so much, so that she
could get an uninterrupted view of the sky.
Odd that she had not yet seen anybody she knew. She had to
walk almost half a mile before she came to somewhere she could stand and look.
The lights still rushed across the blackness. Occasionally
two from different directions would collide and then a shower of golden and
lilac stars would sprinkle down towards Terrestra’s surface. But it was not
accompanied by the ‘oohs’ and aahs’ heard at the President’s laser display.
Everyone stood in absolute silence. This was something really special. The
excitement carried on growing inside Marijam’s stomach. She felt as if she were
glowing. And it was good watching the lights through the plastiglass tubes. She
seemed as if she was nearer to them than when she looked through the sky light.
You didn’t have the long tube of rock and stone.
Gradually, though, the brightness of the lights faded, and
their path across the sky became slower, less urgent. Suddenly, one last
vibrant streak of red seemed to rush at the plastiglass tube where they were
standing.
The silence broke. There was a gasp of surprise, perhaps of
fear. The light hovered, almost threateningly. Then it vanished suddenly. There
was nothing left but a clear night sky. Clearer, Marijam thought, than she had
ever seen it before. Was her mother right? Was the poison cloud shifting at
last?
The noise that the people now made as they moved towards the
lifts compensated for the earlier silence. There was an excited chatter. And
all sorts of ideas about what might have caused the lights.
‘I bet it’s somebody from another planet,’ a young boy
cried. ‘I bet they’ve got some guards up there that they didn’t tell us about.
They’ve been zapped.’
‘It could just be some strange meteorite storm,’ the man
with him replied.
‘I wouldn’t have thought they’d be that colourful, though,’
replied another man.
Marijam didn’t want to go back to the apartment. It would be
too much of an anticlimax to go back to work. And she was not far from the
Laguna, the nectar bar where people from her school level were encouraged to go
to meet people of their own generation.
For once, anyway, Marijam felt the need to be amongst people,
and drink some of the state-provided nectar with its mild mind-altering
chemicals.
The Laguna was buzzing when she arrived. Marijam almost
turned straight back. People she wanted, yes, but not this many. But she had to
pause a moment to admire the granite walls. The Laguna, at least, was a real
cave, unlike most of the man-made ones that inhabitants of Terrestra used as
their homes. The ceiling was covered with a huge screen, which showed the
picture taken from a camera up on the surface. You could almost believe that
you were outside.
Marijam looked up at the sky. No, there was definitely no
more sign of the lights. And yes, she was sure the sky did look clearer than
normal.
‘Marijam!’ a voice suddenly called. ‘Over here!’
Marijam turned to see who had called her. A girl in a silver
tunic and with purple hair was waving frantically at her. A whole group from
her school unit were sitting in one of the alcoves. It was Sadie Rojens. They
had once worked on a project together, though mainly via the dataserve.
‘So what do you think caused those lights?’ asked Sadie
excitedly. ‘We’re just getting one or two ideas here.’
‘What would you like to drink, Marijam?’ said a male voice.
A tall boy who was now standing up next to the table. It was
Rainer Elbman. He looked quite elegant
in his deep navy tunic. It looked as if it was made of wool and so must have
been expensive.
‘Oh, er … a peach and melon, I think,’ said Marijam blushing
slightly.
‘Hands off, he’s mine,’ Sadie hissed in her ear.
The thought had never occurred to Marijam.
‘Well, Marijam, what do you reckon?’ asked another masculine
voice. Ponty Davidson. ‘What was all that about?’
Marijam felt herself flush. Ponty made a point of talking to
her at every school meet. She always felt so awkward talking to boys, but with
Ponty it was worse. He seemed to stifle her. She couldn’t work out what he
wanted of her.
‘Do you think it’s the poison cloud going?’ she managed to
mumble eventually.
‘Maybe,’ replied Ponty. ‘Or maybe it’s because one of the
most delicious girls in our social group has decided to show off her assets at
last.’
His pupils were wide open and she could feels his eyes first
on her legs, and then on her breasts. He slid an arm around her waist and
pulled her towards him, nestling his nose into her hair. ‘Oh, and you smell so
gorgeous too,’ he said. ‘Have you any idea, what you’re doing to me?’ he asked.
‘Put her down,’ said one of the other girls. ‘This is much
more interesting.’
Marijam managed to wriggle free. She was surprised, though
to see something different flash across Ponty’s face. There was something in
his eyes. He looked almost as if he was going to cry.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Won’t you go out with me, though? I
promise I’ll behave well.’
‘Oh look,’ said Marijam, as another bright flash chased
across the sky. When she turned back,
Ponty had disappeared.
‘Well, I guess we’ll know soon enough, what’s been
happening,’ said one of the other boys. ‘I bet the scientists are on to it
already.’
‘They’ll be putting it up on the news screens soon, then we’ll
know,’ said someone else.
Rainer placed her drink down in front of her.
‘Who’s that over there?’ he asked.
Marijam looked over to where he was pointing. It was a boy
she had never seen before. His tunic was a little odd. Not really quite the
usual shape. He was white but had much darker skin than she had ever seen
before and his hair was much lighter than everybody else’s.
I don’t know, thought Marijam, but I wish I did. That odd,
exciting feeling was beginning all over again. Her stomach was turning
summersaults and her heart was racing. She held her breath until she really
needed to breathe again.
Now she understood what Sadie was talking about. She took a
sip of her peach and melon nectar.
